


Ma'am, Hi

by WarriorQean



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Implied Smut, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 22:24:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19450672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorQean/pseuds/WarriorQean
Summary: Two words, a spark, ten years. Why did it take them so long?





	Ma'am, Hi

Natasha didn't really know when it had first started. The feelings. It was funny, she had never believed in love and had always been taught that feelings and caring made you weak. But she had fallen nonetheless, and she had fallen hard.

_Ma'am_

_Hi_

At first, it had barely been anything. She had felt a flutter in her chest the first time she had heard his voice on the decks of the herricarrier. It had been deep and respectful, and he had been one of the few who focused on her face rather than her body. It had been a flutter. Only a flutter she told herself, over, and over. And at first that had been enough. She knew he wasn't at all interested in her. She was a spy, a broken, horrible spy. So she pushed it down and fought aliens. She allowed him to launch her up into the air, but other than that stayed away from him as best she could. Until Fury had assigned him as her partner after Clint went back to the farm to recover from his brainwashing. She had considered asking Fury to give her a different partner, but that would have raised a whole bunch of other questions that she didn't want to answer. So instead she fought beside him. They started to talk and he was different than she had expected. Sure he was old fashioned and shy around her, but he slowly started to open up. His favorite color was red, he liked Chinese food and was hopeless at dancing. He enjoyed baseball, drawing and had a small fear of heights. He rarely talked about the past and she didn't bring it up. It was comfortable and felt right. She began to think of confessing what she'd been bottling up for the past two years, but never got the nerve up. Then Fury was in the hospital and died. Steve had the file and she took it from the machine. It was a pretty good place to hide something, she'd give him that unless of course, someone wanted some gum. And she had. she told him about the Winter Soldier and they tried to find out where to go next and ended up at a mall. Turned out he was a terrible actor as well as liar, and she made the split-second decision to use the ultimate undercover method.

_Kiss me._

_What?_

_Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable._

_Yes they do._

And with that, she had kissed Steve Rogers. It was ... different than what she had been expecting. Maybe just because he was Captain America and she was used to him being flawless that it wasn't that good. But him being from the forties and the element of surprise probably had thrown him off to. Later in the car, though she had asked him questions, hoping to learn more about the past, something that had been avoided for a long time.

_Nobody special then?_

_Believe it or not, it's kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience._

_That's okay, just make something up_

_What like you?_

_Truth is a matter of circumstance, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I._

_That's a hard way to live._

_Yeah, it's a good way not to die though._

She'd paused.

_What do you want me to be?_

_How about a friend._

They had smiled at each other then. And for a second she had maybe thought that he felt something too. But she had probably just imagined it Then they were at a ghost camp and SHIELD was actually Hydra and they sent a bomb. Steve saved her though, and they were at Sam's and he was telling her he trusted her to save his life. He'd had a nightmare that night though, and she had crawled in next to him without a second thought. He'd woken up and wrapped his arms around her, neither saying anything. Natasha had kissed him at some point, and it had escalated to the point where he was on top of her and she was muffling her moans into a pillow so they wouldn't wake Sam. They hadn't talked about it, because suddenly Steve's old friend was alive and was the Winter Soldier and trying to kill them. And Fury was actually alive and they fought and saved the world yet again. She and Steve still hadn't talked and then they were in the graveyard with Sam. And there was NO way she was talking about it with Sam there. So she settled for a kiss on the cheek.

_Do me a favor, call that nurse?_

_What's her name again?_ He'd asked with a smirk.

 _Sharon, she's nice_.

She'd left with that and hadn't seen him until Ultron. Until she'd started flirting with Bruce. She had seen Steve encouraging him to pursue her with a sad smile, and she had an equally sad smile on her face too.

She'd tried things with Bruce anyway, even going as far as to tell him about her sterilization and poured out her heart to him. He had abandoned her anyways, and afterward, Steve had been there. He had always been there for her. They had trained recruits and worked together more often. They'd started sleeping together about a week before the whole accords thing, and the look on Steve's face though when she had agreed with Tony, she'd considered switching sides them and there. But she had already chosen, and he wouldn't be swayed. So she helped Tony find them and tried to convince him to surrender. But of course, he didn't. He was Captain America, he always did what was right.

Maybe it was time to do the right thing too.

So she fired her widow bites at T'Challa. And the look on Steve's face when he thought she was going to fire them at him nearly broke her heart. He hadn't even lifted his shield to fight her, and she wanted to say so many unsaid things at that moment. Confess everything she had ever felt about him to his face. Regardless of who was listening. But there was no time and she simply told him to go. To go away from her and to freedom. And he did. He ran. She left soon after that too. Ross was coming for her and it was always better to be on the run than in prison.

She'd hopped from place to place, sometimes helping out the people in an area, sometimes lying low. She wasn't really looking for Steve and the others, but the thought had crossed her mind a few times. She found him anyway.

She was at a small bookshop in Italy when the bell over the door had jingled. She had immediately tensed and wanted to grab her gun that was strapped under her dress, but relaxed on hearing the deep voice that stumbled over their broken Italian. She knew who it was at once.

"Hello Steve," she had told him.

He turned so fast at her voice he nearly tipped over. "Nat?"

"Hi."

They had walked out together and got lunch. She found herself looking at him quite a bit. And she didn't see that when she looked away, he looked at her. His hair was more brown than blond and he had a light beard. Her hair was different though too, and it didn't take him long to notice.

"You dyed your hair."

She glanced at him, "Something wrong with it Rogers?"

He smiled, "Just different is all." They ordered and the waitress was obviously hitting on Steve. He seemed very embarrassed, so Natasha jumped in and called him her boyfriend. After the waitress was gone he turned to her.

"You didn't have to do that."

She shrugged, "Yes I did." She sipped her coffee and could feel Steve's eyes on her.

"Are we gonna talk about it?"

"About what."

"Don't bullshit me."

She smirked, "Language Rogers." She raised her cup to her lips again, but he wrapped his hand around her wrist and forced her to set it down.

He sighed, "Nat, I love you. I have for a long time now, and we started... well, you know, and the whole accords thing. You're sending me mixed signals here Nat, I just don't want them to be mixed anymore." She sat there dumbfounded. All this time she'd been harboring her feelings toward a man who she had convinced herself had no interest in her. And here he was. Sitting in front of her and telling her that he loved her.

"I love you."

"Really?"

"Really."

Steve had taken her back to where he was staying, hands locked together the whole way there. Sam greeted them at the door with a gun right in their faces. He took one look at their locked hands and stuck the gun back in his belt, grabbed his coat, and called over his shoulder that it "was about damn time." For the next two years, they were together. The small group traveled the world; with the exception of Steve and Natasha spending a few lazy weeks in Paris alone. It was perfect, or as perfect as it could get. They were in Brazil when Tony went missing. They got to Wanda as fast as they could and defended her from the aliens. When Steve saw the woman (did aliens even have genders?) going to hurt Natasha, he felt anger like he never had before. He had defended her and wanted to kill the woman, but he didn't get the chance. And then Bruce was suddenly no longer a distant memory, he was on Earth, in the same room as Natasha. He wanted to kiss her in front of him so Bruce would know not to make any advances, but he didn't. Sam's comment probably gave them away a little bit, but he didn't mind. Then they were on the Quinjet to Wakanda, preparing to fight the largest threat they had faced yet. As they exited the Quinjet and their hands brushed momentarily, and the same spark flew through them as they touched. On the tower, while trying to get the stone out of Vison's head Steve glanced in Natasha's direction, but T'Challa locked eyes with him instead, as she was staring out the window and running her hand over her mouth. They fought as they had never fought before, with an army to back them up and the most advanced technology in the world. And they almost won, almost. But Thanos came and reversed the destruction of the stone, giving him it. And though no one would ever say it to Thor, he really should have gone for the head.

Bucky disappeared in front of his eyes and Rhodey was calling out for Sam with no response, so Steve knew that he had lost at least two friends that day, he was only praying that Natasha was alive and she was praying for him. He turned Vision's corpse on its back just as Natasha came running through the trees. They had failed, and they all knew it. But this wasn't just a destroyed city. It was half the population. Gone. With the snap of a finger. And they could have stopped it.

Natasha collapsed next to him and he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. Thanking any god who was listening that they had both survived and were at least together. No one said anything as the tears started to stream down Natasha's face and Steve rocked her, comforted her, and whispered things in her ears. Mindless promises, but they calmed him down and they did the same to her despite how stupid and mostly untrue they were. He knew that they would eventually have to leave the forest where they currently sat and help the world once more, but at the moment they wanted to leave it all behind.

And at that moment they were just two people in love. Not two Avengers who had a responsibility to the world. They just cried together as the remaining few of their friends looked on, and comforted each other as much as they could.


End file.
